Blue
by Kryptaria
Summary: Sometimes, even the Double O's get into more trouble than they'd expected. Fortunately, Q can handle any crisis.


_Blue._

The cube was blue in a way that nothing before had been or would be again. It _redefined_ blue. Poets would weep to see it. Artists would pluck out their eyes, because all other sights paled before the perfection of this blue.

Q just looked at the cube, gave an exasperated sigh, and then lifted his gaze to regard Alec and James with the same expression humans had used on their cats, upon being presented with a bloody corpse, for countless thousands of years.

_"Really?" _he seemed to ask with the quirk of one eyebrow, though he remained silent.

James' resolve broke first. "Well?" he asked, a hint of pride coming into his voice, though it went unnoticed under the lingering rasp. _Smoke inhalation,_ Medical had said, which was no surprise. They'd lit a bloody helicarrier on fire to get the cube in the first place. Smoke was the least of their worries.

"Are _you_ involved in this as well?" Q asked, turning to Alec, who knew better, after months of dating Q, than to answer that question directly.

"Shouldn't we lock it in a drawer or something?" he asked instead, sidling around Q's desk.

Q allowed Alec to give him a kiss on the cheek. "We should lock it in another bloody _dimension_, gentlemen. Why did you bring it here?"

"You're our Quartermaster," James said, finally frowning a bit, as if his plan had suddenly derailed. "We bring you all sorts of _interesting_ things."

"Yes, but —" was as far as Q got, before chaos descended.

MI6 was one of those places on earth that was full of people who were not just trained but overtrained, and Q Branch was at the heart of MI6. The first hint of an explosion, and _everyone_ burst into action. Techs hit emergency backup switches or dove for cover under desks. Administrators, less blasé about such things, ran for the emergency stairwells. Field agents who were in Q Branch for kits or post-mission debriefings or just to be nuisances — James and Alec among them — grabbed at weapons and charged towards the sound.

With another exasperated sigh, Q lifted his hand —

And everything _stopped_.

James and Alec slammed into a wall of invisible force with identical surprised grunts. Beyond the office, everyone in Q Branch collapsed, unconscious. All of them had impossibly gentle falls, missing sharp corners or awkward stairs. Mercifully, their minds were _elsewhere_, out of reach of —

"Hello, Brother," Q said, taking off his glasses to regard the man who stepped through the force-wall.

He straightened and turned his head from one side to another, regarding Alec and James — and their drawn, aimed guns — with a tiny, indulgent smile. "Collecting pets?" he asked in a voice that could — and had — command whole worlds into battle.

Q's third sigh was sharper. Irritated. _Dangerous_.

"My _boyfriends,_ Alec Trevelyan, and James Bond, his partner-in-crime," he said, waving a hand at each of them in turn.

"Someone we should know?" Alec prompted. _Growled_, really. He had temper issues, but that wasn't so much a personality flaw as it was an essential job skill.

"My brother —"

"Loki," the intruder announced. His benevolent smile was the smile of a shark giving its victim a last moment to say its goodbyes before tearing it to shreds. "And I believe you..." He again looked from Alec to James and back. "_Both _of you have something that belongs to me."

"You said you don't have family," Alec said, taking a step back and to the side. James did the same. They were both moving to put themselves between Q and Loki.

It was touching, really, how protective they could be. Irrational, even _suicidal_, but touching.

"I don't have family _here,_" Q corrected. "Why aren't you on Asgard, Loki? And why isn't _this_" — he tapped the cube with one fingertip — "in the Allfather's vault?"

Loki's smile turned sweet and loving. "You know how he gets over the millennia. Forgetful. Such a shame, how the mind —"

"Right," Q interrupted, lifting the cube with one hand. He put his glasses back on. The blue spots reflected in the glass flared brilliantly, obscuring his eyes for a moment.

Loki held out his hand, and his clothing — a bland, unremarkable suit, possibly black or maybe blue or maybe charcoal — flashed with brilliant gold, becoming a glorious costume of green and black and gold. It should have been absurd, but even James Bond and Alec Trevelyan, MI6's two most senior agents of the Double O Programme, stepped back in awe.

"Don't," Q warned sternly, scolding Loki in the same exact tone he reserved for the field agents, boyfriends included, when they returned from a mission without all of his issued kit.

"Baldr," Loki said, taking one step forward. "Be reasonable, Brother. You've been exiled here —"

"Exiled?" Q asked. "_Exiled?_ You tried to kill me, Loki. I _left_, because you're a sodding pain in the arse. And just because you lost your bloody toys here —"

He lifted the cube, that glorious cube of unearthly blue, and flicked it away like a bug. It disappeared, dwindling into an impossible, unseen distance, until it was no more than a pinprick that vanished into nothingness.

Loki made the smallest sound of protest, reaching.

Sternly, Q finished, "That does _not_ give you the right to come to Midgard. Now go home, Brother, before I get angry."

Loki took a deep breath. Exhaled. Furious gold fires flickered deep in his eyes. "I won't forget this."

"Good. Maybe you'll learn something from it this time," Q scolded. "Give my love to Mother."

A sly gleam came into Loki's eyes. "She misses you. You could come back with me."

"I'm busy. My boyfriends were about to explain to me why they saw fit to assault one of our ally's airships," Q said, turning his gaze on James and Alec.

At that, all three men — or, well, two men and one god — flinched.

"Of course. Have fun, gentlemen," Loki said, giving them all an oily smile. "Heimdall! Open the —"

_"Not here, you sodding idiot!" _Q shouted as thunder rolled impossibly through the underground labyrinth of tunnels and chambers.

With false innocence, Loki said, "Oh. Sorry." He took one step forward and disappeared in a shower of golden sparks before his boot touched the floor.

Q shook his head, and though he didn't openly roll his eyes, it was a near thing.

"Q, was that really —"

_"But Baldr's a god!"_

Their protests cut off as Q, with a hint of remorse in his eyes, lifted his hand. Outside his office, technicians and field agents rose woodenly to their feet. Shook their heads. Picked up the threads of dropped conversations, explaining their pauses as disorientation, perhaps a moment of deja vu or a stray thought that had distracted them.

In Q's office, James and Alec looked at their drawn guns in confusion.

"Hand them over, gentlemen," Q ordered sternly, crooking his finger.

After a baffled moment, James protested, "They're not damaged."

"A fact which I'll be happy to verify," Q insisted. When both guns were on his desk, he smiled in approval. "Now, then, you were about to explain precisely why you saw fit to assault an American helicarrier?"

"Right. It was — Where'd it go?" Alec asked, batting at his jacket pockets.

"Here," James said, holding up a USB stick that hadn't been in his pocket just seconds earlier. His memories reshaped themselves, and he grinned proudly. "Secret weapons research, Q, just like you suspected. Here's all the data."

Q reached for the USB stick as James pulled it slyly back. "James..."

"Don't I deserve —"

_"We," _Alec interrupted.

"Don't _we_ deserve something in return?"

"I won't write you up for _not_ returning two earwigs, two mobile phones, and a satellite transceiver," Q promised sweetly.

James and Alec exchanged a quick look. "Agreed," James said.

Alec sighed. "Agreed."

"Thank you," Q said, accepting not just the memory stick but a slow, lingering kiss from each of them. "And if you finish your paperwork by six, I'll take you both out to dinner."


End file.
